Maybe we should all agree to not talk about Nvidia’s stock after earnings

Chinese EV maker Nio posted Q1 results before markets opened on Thursday, reporting earnings that beat expectations and strong sales guidance for the second quarter. Shares of the company climbed more than 4% in premarket trading.

For the first quarter, Nio reported:

• Adjusted earnings of $0.00 per share, compared to the $0.05 per share loss that Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet expected.

• $3.7 billion in revenue, compared to the $3.74 billion consensus.

• 83,465 vehicle deliveries, slightly exceeding its own forecast of between 80,000 and 83,000.

For Q2, Nio guided for deliveries of between 110,000 and 115,000, compared to estimates of 113,807. The company expects second-quarter revenues to come in between $4.75 billion and $4.99 billion, while analysts were forecasting $4.6 billion.

The Chinese auto industry has seen a surge in exports so far this year, as companies make efforts to combat declining domestic sales. Nio, which is still relatively new to overseas operations, has plans to ship “several thousand” EVs overseas this year.

Walmart, America’s largest retailer and a bellwether for the US consumer, slipped this morning after it reported Q1 earnings results that hit Wall Street estimates but lukewarm guidance for the current quarter.

For the three-month period ending in April, Walmart reported:

• Adjusted earnings per share at $0.66, right in line with what analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

• Revenues at $177.8 billion, more than the $174.8 billion analysts were penciling in.

For the current quarter, Walmart said it expects:

• Adjusted EPS to fall between $0.72 and $0.74, less than the $0.75 expected.

• Sales to grow 4.0% to 5.0% year over year — a lower midpoint than the 4.9% growth the Street had guessed.

For its current fiscal year, the company reiterated its guidance, which is:

• Adjusted EPS to hit between $2.75 and $2.85, less than the $2.90 analysts expect.

• Sales to increase 3.5% to 4.5% year over year. Analysts had been forecasting about 5% annual revenue growth.

Walmart fell 2% shortly after the release. The stock is up more than 16% since the start of the year through Wednesday’s close.

Quantum computing stocks are soaring before the bell on Thursday after the Trump administration signed a number of letters of intent (LOIs) to award a total of $2 billion in grants to nine quantum companies, in deals that also include equity stakes. In press releases published by IBM, GlobalFoundries, D-Wave Quantum, Infleqtion, and Rigetti, LOIs have been signed with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Research and Development Office.

First reported by the WSJ, the following companies are part of the overall package, with respective amount of funding reported:

• IBM, receiving $1 billion of the reported grant.

• GlobalFoundries, $375 million.

• D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Infleqtion, Atom Computing, PsiQuantum, and Quantiniuum, all winning $100 million each.

• Diraq, $38 million.

For IBM, the largest recipient, the funds will be used to "build an American quantum chip foundry," supporting the research and development efforts of a new IBM company: Anderon, set to be "America's first pure-play quantum foundry" according to IBM, which will match the federal funding dollar-for-dollar, plowing $1 billion into Anderon.

The agreements, which will be funded under the 2022 Chips and Science Act, will be made in exchange for the government taking an unspecified minority equity stake in each of the quantum companies — an unusual federal move that has become common under President Trump, with investments in the rare earth space and chips (most notably Intel).

Other quantum names not included in the report are also ticking up in sympathy, including pure-play IonQ, Quantum Computing, Arqit Quantum, and Honeywell (which backs Quantinuum), following the administration’s show of confidence in the nascent technology. The government is also reportedly working on an executive order focused on the quantum industry, reported the Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

Nebius is up 8% in premarket trading on Thursday on a double dose of news flow.

The first is more solid: the AI cloud company announced that it is partnering with Bloom Energy to deploy Bloom’s fuel cell technology to power its AI infrastructure build-out, with their first project expected to deliver 328 MW of installed capacity this year.

The second, that Nebius is raising its prices by ~30% for its on-demand (pay as you go) rates for access to its Nvidia GPUs, is unverified, stemming from a tweet from a user on X, who claims to have been emailed by the company about the price changes.

If true, it goes without saying that a 28-30% jump in spot prices to rent H100, H200, B200, or B300 chips, is a pretty bullish statement on the continued demand for compute.

Per Nebius’ press release, Bloom’s fuel cell systems will provide on-site, behind-the-meter electricity for the neocloud company to meet demand for Nebius’ full-stack AI cloud platform initially in the US, with potential for global expansion. In a 6-K filing, Nebius gave more detail, with the power capacity being provided under expected to come online in three phases, each with a supply term of 10 years. All told, Nebius will pay “pay monthly services fees of up to $2.6 billion in the aggregate.”

Through Bloom’s systems, “clean power with virtually no pollutants is deployed onsite, on the timelines our customers need, with the availability AI workloads require,” commented Andrey Korolenko, Chief Product and Infrastructure Officer at Nebius. Nebius also noted in the press release that the technology generates electricity without combustion, and tends to face a lighter permitting hurdle than combustion-based systems. Its modular design allows for faster deployment across the board.

The news comes as Nebius and its neocloud peers like CoreWeave and IREN face new competitors like Google and Blackstone’s new AI cloud company in the race to build out AI infrastructure-for-rent. Shares of Bloom Energy are also up 3% this morning.